In industrial manufacturing of automotive tires from rubber the tires are subjected to multiple controls. To this purpose the tires are mounted on measuring or control rims. It is usual to humidify the beads of the tires before mounted on the rim in order to easily remove the tires from the control rims after the control operation has carried out. The humidifying agent is a liquid or a paste. It is known to apply the humidifiying medium manually with brushes. Such method is not well suited for automatic manufacturing.
It is further known to apply the humidifying agent directly on the rim or the tire by a spraying device. Also this method has some deficiencies. The known spraying means do not allow the humidifying of the tire seat on the rim solely, rather also the environment of the apparatus will be humidified. Thus the manufacturing machines are contaminated in the region of the spraying device. Also the machines following the spraying device are contaminated by the humidifying agent dropping from the tires. If such tires are mounted to the rims of automobiles it also cannot be avoided that the rims are contaminated by the humidifying agent. If for instance the rims are made of aluminum unremovable stains are left on the rims. It is clear to the man in the art that such rims cannot be used in the automobile manufacturing.
If the beads are sprayed directly with the humidifying agent it cannot be avoided that the side walls and the interior of the tires are humidified too. This contamination has the same deficiencies as described above.
Thus, it is an object of the invention to design an apparatus wherein the humidifying of the beads of automotive tires can be carried out automatically. The apparatus according to the invention is to humidify the bead of the tire solely with a lubricious agent.